St. Simon, surnamed the Canaanite, or Zelotes, to distinguish him from Simon Peter and from Simeon, the second Bishop of Jerusalem, is generally associated in legend and in art with St. Jude, whose work in Judea he is said to have shared. Absolutely nothing is, however, known with any certainty of his life, beyond the fact recorded in the Gospels that he was one of the twelve Apostles.
Some are of opinion that it was at the house of St. Simon that the miracle of the turning of water into wine was performed, and Theodoret asserts that he was of the tribe of Zabulon or Naphthali. The name Zelotes has been variously interpreted, but it is generally supposed that it means the same as Canaanite, and that St. Simon had really nothing to do with the Jewish sect called Zealots, although certain writers assert that he was a member of it before he joined the disciples of Jesus.
After witnessing the Ascension of the Lord, sharing in the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and aiding in the drawing up of the Apostles’ Creed, St. Simon is said to have worked with St. Jude for some months in Palestine, and then to have gone alone to North Africa. Some even think that he visited Great Britain, and there anticipated the work of St. Augustine by converting many to the true faith.
In the Apocryphal History of the Apostles, attributed to Abdias, Bishop of Babylon, St. Simon and St. Jude are said to have met again late in life, and to have travelled together to Babylon, where they converted the King and many of his subjects, but raised against them the fury of the priests, so that when they penetrated into a district away from the court they paid for their temerity with their lives. They were dragged before the idols of the Sun and Moon and ordered to offer incense. They of course refused, and though the power of their prayers was such that they broke the images to pieces with words alone, they could not save themselves. God, however, concludes the narrative, did not allow the crime of their murder to go unpunished, for immediately afterwards a great tempest arose, in which the temples were destroyed and many heathen were crushed to dust, including all the priests who had instigated the cruel deed.
The Bishop does not say how the Apostles were killed, and two distinct traditions on the subject were current in early times, one that St. Simon was sawn in two and St. Jude was crucified, the other that both suffered death on the cross, the former on one of the same form as that of the Savior, the latter on a mere upright post, to which his arms were bound. The detail that St. Jude’s end was hastened by his being shot with arrows is sometimes added. In the engravings on the old door of the Basilica of S. Paolo fuori le Mura and in other early Greek works of art St. Simon is represented on a cross of ordinary form, and sometimes the inscription O.CIMΩN. is inscribed beneath it. The doubt as to the mode of martyrdom suffered by St. Simon is reflected in the various attributes assigned to him, for he holds some times a saw, sometimes a cross, and occasionally a lance. He and St. Jude are said to have been among the shepherds who heralded the Savior’s birth, and for this reason he is sometimes represented as a very old man with a bald head and a long white beard. In choosing him as their patron Saint, the tanners and curriers seem to have confused St. Simon with the tanner of the same name who received St Peter into his house, although of course there is absolutely no connection between the two Statues or pictures of St. Simon individually treated are rare, and his appearance varies very greatly when he appears amongst the other Apostles, those artists who did not accept the tradition quoted above representing him as a man in the prime of life.
St. Simon is one of the children, St. Jude being the other, on the steps of the throne in Perugino’s ‘Family of St. Anne,’ and in a similar group by Lorenzo di Pavia, now in the Louvre. There is also a portrait study of him as a grown man by Carlo Dolci in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence.
St. Jude, or Judas, is distinguished from the betrayer of the Lord by the surname of Thaddeus, or of Lebbeus, the former generally supposed to signify one who offers praise, the latter a man of great intelligence, though some derive the Lebbeus from the Hebrew word leb or lion. St. Luke, in the original Greek MS. of his Gospel, describes St. Jude as the son of James, not the brother, and it is difficult to understand the use of the word ‘brother,’ which has, indeed, caused considerable confusion in the authorized English version. Early Greek artists sometimes distinguished between St. Jude and St. Thaddeus, treating them as two different persons, the former young, the latter old, and, according to them, it was St. Thaddeus, not St. Jude, who was with St. Simon amongst the shepherds, to whom the angels appeared on the eve of the Savior’s birth.
Whatever truth there may be in the various traditions respecting St. Jude, there seems little doubt that he and Thaddeus were one and the same person, and that he was nearly connected with the Lord. He does not, however, appear to have become a disciple until shortly before the Last Supper, and his question, ‘Lord, how is it that Thou wilt manifest Thyself unto us, and not unto the world?’ proves that he did not at first grasp the fundamental truth that the kingdom of Christ was of a spiritual, not a temporal, character. The terrible events which rapidly succeeded each other soon after he joined the twelve must, however, have opened his eyes to the truth.
After the Crucifixion and Ascension of the Lord St. Jude went forth, as did the other Apostles, to preach the Gospel to the heathen, and, as already mentioned in speaking of St. Simon, he is supposed to have worked and suffered martyrdom with him. Nothing is, however, known with any certainty of his life, but he was probably at Jerusalem in the year 62 A.D. to assist in the deliberations of the Apostles in the crisis through which the Infant Church was passing at the time of the cruel death of the first Bishop of the Holy City. The Epistle, long attributed to St. Jude, and supposed to have been written from Jerusalem at this trying time, is now attributed to another hand, and there seems to be some truth in the assertion that St. Jude suffered much from the similarity of his name to that of the betrayer, and on this account was little esteemed amongst the early Christians. It is said, indeed, that his name was never invoked except when all other Saints had been appealed to for aid without result; he is the patron of the desperate and despairing alone, but they are supposed never to turn to him in vain, for he has a great deal more time to spare than the more popular Saints, and it seems only fair that some amends should be made to him for the hatred a mere accident brought upon him when he was on earth.
The attributes given to St. Jude vary considerably; in many old calendars, the 28th of October, the day dedicated to him and St. Simon, is marked sometimes with a cross and a lance, sometimes with a saw and a halberd; and now and then one or another of these emblems is associated with a Sail, but this has reference, probably, merely to the fete-day occurring during the thrashing season. In some old Greek pictures St. Jude is represented bound to a cross which is planted in the ground upside down; more rarely he carries a cross of ordinary form over his shoulder, and he sometimes wears an image of the Savior hung on his neck, or holds one in his hand, an allusion to a beautiful legend often referred to in ecclesiastical history, sometimes in connection with St. Jude, and sometimes with a disciple named Thaddaeus, who was one of the first converts to join the Church. The story is as follows: ‘A certain King of Edessa named Abgar, hearing of the wonders Christ was working in Judea, sent messengers to ask the Great Healer to visit him in bis capital, for ne was suffering from the terrible disease of leprosy. The Lord replied that it was impossible for Him to come in person, for He had to finish His work in Judea before the end, which was rapidly approaching, but after He should have returned to the glory of His Father’s home He would send one of His disciples. The promise was fulfilled, some saying that St. Jude received his instructions from the Master’s own lips before the Crucifixion, others that they were given to him in a vision after the Ascension. Arrived at Edessa, St. Jude, whose face radiated forth such glory that he was at once recognized as the envoy of the Great Healer, was taken to the palace. With a touch he healed the leper, and as a token that the miracle was wrought by the power of Christ he gave the monarch a portrait of the Master taken during His lifetime. King Abgar and his whole court were converted and baptized, and from that time forth the great Apostle was much venerated throughout Mesopotamia.’
St. Matthias, whose name has the beautiful and appropriate meaning of ‘ the gift of Jehovah,’ who was chosen by lot to take the place of Judas Iscariot, is supposed to have been the constant companion of Christ and the first disciples, long before he was admitted to the privilege of actual Apostleship. He is said to have been a man of stern and self-denying character, full of zeal for the cause of Christ, but with little tolerance for the weaknesses of others. Some authorities say he worked chiefly in Cappadocia, preached on the shores of the Caspian Sea, and was martyred in Colchis; others that Judea was the field of his labors, and that he was killed by the Jews, being first stoned and then dispatched with an axe. It is more probable that he suffered death by being beheaded with a sword or axe, or, as some assert, by decollation; that is to say, he was compelled to place his head in a kind of roughly-constructed guillotine, and it was then wrenched off with a pulley by the executioner, as represented by Lucas Cranach in his series of the twelve Apostles. The word ‘decollation’ constantly occurs in connection with the death of St. John the Baptist and other martyrs; but it should, strictly speaking, be applied only to what was really strangulation, followed by decapitation. The Abbey Church of Triers, and that of S. Maria Maggiore, Rome, both claim to own relics of St. Matthias.
The most important attributes of St. Matthias in art are a scroll, which is, however, of very rare occurrence, with the words, ‘I believe in the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting a sword, a hatchet, an axe, or a halberd, each of the four having reference to bis supposed death by beheading; for, as is well known, the halberd or military axe was carried by the lictors before Roman magistrates in token of their power of condemning to death, and that weapon was more often used than the sword in public executions. Raphael, however, gave St. Matthias a lance, as did most of the German artists, and now and then he has a club or a stone, all in obvious allusion to the supposed instruments of his martyrdom. The Apostle sometimes also holds a long-shafted cross resting on his shoulder as an emblem of his Christianity, and instances occur of his being represented expiring on a cross, although there is absolutely no reason to suppose that he was crucified. The big fish which is coupled with the axe in old calendars to mark the 24th of February, the day dedicated to St. Matthias, is supposed simply to mean that the date is approaching when the fish will go up the rivers to spawn.
St. Matthias is the chosen patron of carpenters and tool-makers, probably because of the tradition that an axe was the implement of his death. Strange to say, he is also supposed to extend protection to frequenters of taverns and repentant drunkards: it has been suggested, because he was himself admitted to the kingdom of heaven late in the day, even as will be those who repent of their evil ways at the last.
In representations of the Choosing of St. Matthias by lot, a ray of light is seen falling on the new Apostle’s head; for St. Denis relates that the brethren were guided in their choice by a direct sign from heaven. In various rood-screens in England, especially in Norfolk, and on the Continent the last of the Apostles is introduced holding a halberd or leaning on a sword, and in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, is a picture by Cosimo Roselli, in which he bolds the sword by the point, a peculiarity to which various meanings have been attached, but which was probably a mere freak of the artist.
Adapted from: The Saints in Christian Art: The Evangelists, Apostles, and Other Early Saints, By Mrs. Arthur Bell, (London: George Bell & Sons, 1901).